Amid the avalanche of hysteria and hackwork on Ukraine from people who ought to know better, Keith Gessen’s piece “Ukraine, Putin, and the West” in n+1 is a blessing — and ought to be required reading. Keith was kind enough to let me reprint it here. If you read one thing on Ukraine today, make [...]

Devilish Forces Stephen Boykewich On Putin’s Labyrinth: Spies, Murder, and the Dark Heart of the New Russia, by Steve LeVine. Random House, June 2008. $26 In early October 2007, almost three years to the day after I began my career as a journalist in Russia, a conversation with a former CIA agent brought it to an [...]

Whitman’s War: On Whitman’s Civil War Notebooks By Stephen Boykewich Meridian THE CIVIL WAR THREATENED TO GIVE THE LIE to every claim Walt Whitman made about America. In the preface to his 1855 Leaves of Grass, he set forth a vision of a “teeming nation of nations,” unified, for all its variety, by the spirit of openness [...]

How Russia Got Into the Democratic Club By Stephen Boykewich The Moscow Times Friday, July 14, 2006. Page 1. ST. PETERSBURG – When an ailing, barely reelected President Boris Yeltsin was struggling to contain Russian fury in 1997 over NATO expansion into former Soviet states, U.S. President Bill Clinton had a solution: Let Russia into the Group of Seven. [...]

The Man With the Plan for Russia Inc. By Stephen Boykewich The Moscow Times ST. PETERSBURG – Using natural resources for geopolitical gain may upset the West, but for the man who was helping shape President Vladimir Putin’s energy strategy years before he took office, it’s merely common sense. “There was a time when salt was [...]

Tales, Old and New, From a Legendary Dom By Stephen Boykewich Staff Writer When the windows sparkled through the night at the monumental apartment block across the river from the Kremlin, it once meant that the Great Terror had struck another member of the Communist Party elite. Now it may mean that a party of [...]